[We would like to thank Elizabeth L. Woods (@tweezeher) aka @organic.music.society for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

It’s been a quiet life for me here in Catskills since my family moved here in 1968. My father, a rare dog breeder, decided that the city was no place to raise a family (or a dozen or so chow-chow’s at any given time). I was only 15 when I took the trip to Yasugur’s Farm. I had smoked a little pot with some friends back in Brooklyn, but who knew it would take me leaving the metropolis my father feared would change me to blow the hinges clean off my doors of perception, leaving me born again in a field with 400,000 muddy psychonauts.

The world has changed a lot since then, and whatever good-fight we thought we had won after three days of peace, love, and music has been forfeited in exchange for a world less tethered to reality than I was at 15 years old on 200µg of what I was told was called “liquid sunshine in a bottle,” which I had later learned to be LSD-25, trying to sell wet dogs to the strangers in the rain.

This Phish show was nothing like that though…Other than some mud & psychonauts.

With Bethel Woods’ new addition of on-site camping, I decided it was now or never to try and feel that feeling I had forgotten on the campgrounds of the legendary festival. Woodstock changed my life and the lives of so many others around the world, but here in the Catskills things have mostly stayed the same, with the exception of a few dairy farms closing. I needed to kickstart my consciousness. It was now or never.

I arrived at Bethel Woods Saturday morning, approximately 10-hours before the show began planning for miles of traffic like I had seen nearly 55 years to the day. I found nothing of the sort; I pulled up to the quiet campgrounds, was waved in by a man in a fluorescent safety vest, and found a shady spot to pitch a tent. With the exception of a few sun-damaged kids in pashminas and flat brims slumped over in camp chairs–this just looked like a county fair to me. EZ-Up tents, coolers, cargo shorts, and grills. This was nothing like I had remembered camping at Bethel Woods being. Where was the free love? I intended to go out and find it.

After a couple laps around the semi-soft campground, I saw a technicolor bus pull up. Here it is! Kesey’s Furthur bus. I walked over and did not find Ken Kesey behind the wheel–it was a man named Diego, also donned in a fluorescent safety vest. He barely noticed me as I walked myself on to the rehabilitated school bus. We drove about a mile or so down the road when I heard the war cry of a JBL-120 speaker ringing out over the hallowed festival grounds…

The familiar harmonies of the Grateful Dead’s “Viola Lee Blues” were emanating from what looked like a wedding tent where the original stage Woodstock once stood. Cue flashback. All of a sudden, I’m transported into a familiar cosmic wavelength at the helm of Captain Trips’ ship. But Jerry is dead. Who could it be? “A cover band of a cover band” I scoffed to myself… But the Phish show was hours away. I asked my bus driver to pull over and saddled up to the concert in the field.

The man behind the mic introduced the band as Owsley’s Owls. Owsley. Mad sonic scientist behind the “liquid sunshine in a bottle” that had introdosed me to myself all those years ago. I allowed myself to be bathed in the familiar stylings of Jerry Garcia and began to feel the same strange energy that had been forged in the August rains in 1969. I turned to my right and saw a woman in wrap-around sunglasses & a kimono.

“These guys are the real stuff, huh?” She said, “Welcome to the party, bitch” and offered me something. Without thinking twice, I took it. I perched at the top of the muddy hill and allowed my brain to be rewired by telepathic stylings of Owsley’s Owls for a few hours as whatever the woman in the kimono gave me began to take hold.

Soon enough, the daytime pre-show was over, and I was already feeling better about my decision to make the trip. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the drugs. Regardless, there was something to be found here… I headed into the Phish show.

Outside the concert venue, passing by cops on horses & grown men with their fingers in the air begging for tickets. I hopped into the line. “Hey! You in the Grateful Dead shirt!” I heard through a megaphone in the hands of a security officer directing traffic, “This is a Phish show. Get that shit outta here!” This concert was having an identity crisis, and at this point, so was I.

I made my way past security, very much still in the land of Owsley. I had no idea what my ticket said, but a seat on the lawn felt appropriate for someone in my state of mind & my task at hand.

Phish opened with a song called “Back on The Train”–how fitting. After 55 years, here we all are back on this train along with Phish. Whether by train, plane, or liquid sunshine, it took a lot for us to be here on this side of reality. Woodstock opened those gates in 1969, the crowd at Phish tonight had made it through. Wow, I AM tripping.

Next was “Sample In A Jar," and the man behind the drumkit takes no time to let us know who’s in charge. I had overheard a man who called himself “Mister Mondegreen” that Phish is setting off on their own Woodstock next week in Delaware. If Phish’s tour closing four-day festival is the Championship, that makes these 3-nights in Bethel Woods the playoff games.

A funky new song called “Hey Stranger” has me up and grooving before I know it, and it seems the band is loosening up and allowing us to do the same. Next a song called “Dinner and A Movie," which apparently Phish has only played four times in the past ten years. I hear my father talking to my mother & the cacophonous barking of 12 chow-chow’s. “Let’s go out to Dinner & See A Movie?” That’s how some people get their kicks I suppose. But we left those people at the aforementioned train stop on the other side of reality. That’s not how we get our kicks on this lawn, mister.

I eventually come out of my regressed child-like state and touch down to someone shouting “EAT MY KAZOO!” behind me on the lawn. The song seems to be called “Hell Is Coming," which nearly sent me down a path of no return. I excused myself from reality momentarily until I hear the opening notes to a song called “Sand.” Things seem to be taking a slower pace to get started here. What’s the rush? Let’s stretch & bend this thing & see what happens. Trey & Page seem are poking at each other until eventually, the jam lifts off.

“Gumbo” allows the keyboardist Page to take a walk. Trey is sending sonic phishing lines to reel him in, and eventually the band closes in on a “Maze,” which almost immediately erupts into chaos. Only now am I realizing just how loud the bass is where I am seated on the lawn… And how muddy my shorts are. Woah.

Next, a song about a man cutting off your head and speculating on the weight. What wormhole have I entered? This is the band bearing the torch of our psychedelic free-love revolution? I recognize a song by The Talking Heads. The band seems to be exploring new territories on what is currently the longest jam of the night. The musical direction keeps splintering off & exploring new territories, like taking a wrong turn in the dead of night in Bethel Woods. It’s somehow familiar and beautiful, but unknown. Look… a deer! Or…

An antelope? A big building “Antelope” bounds over the crowds and eventually explodes with some of the most technical playing of the night. After a rapid descent into madness, a shout from Trey to “Set the gear shift to the high-gear of your soul” is received VERY warmly by the crowd–the room seemed to slow down for a moment. A big collective gear shift.

By the time set break ended, the spinners had taken over the pavilion. Some things will never change. The walkways were filled with the free love & lack-of-inhibition that put this county spanning lawn on the map. Trey greets the crowd with a “Thanks for sticking around” and I laugh to myself as I wonder where else we could possibly go.

The set opening “Wilson” comes & goes quickly, giving the spinners of the aisle free range to go absolutely nuts and shake the setbreak off. It seems to be an appetizer, giving way to the main course: an energetic “Down With Disease” that stretches out for nearly 20 minutes. I notice the lights are looking extra kaleidoscopic & focus my attention on the fifth member of the band, the dude behind the light rig.

Some things about live music are just better these days. Although there are no more physical tickets to sneak your friends down to the pavilion, and venue security seems to be under the impression ticket-holding is a crime punishable by harassment as a baseline. All that said, I am somehow now closer to the band than I have ever been before. Genuine confusion seems to be the best way to go about dealing with aggressive rule enforcer types.

A “Twist” emerges from the depths of “Waves," and now I’m part of the spinning whirligig that is the walkway between the pavilion and the lawn. Though “Twist” was not the longest jam of the night, uninhibited shredding guitar solos take center stage, AND I remember the billboard sized tribute to Jimi Hendrix just inside the venue.

“Kill Devil Falls.” The level of jamming, direction and speed turns this into a high wire act. It could definitely all come crashing down–by design. Someone close by says “‘KDF’ is the Official Jam Vehicle of 4.0”–I don’t know what that means, but I am scared.
Eventually, the Kill Devil Falls retreats into “Beneath a Sea of Stars,” just like we all have. The opening line “We’re all here together and the weather’s fine!” is reciprocated with roaring cheers from the crowd. TWICE! What more is there to say?

A mass bathroom break exodus floods the aisles, but I locked in for this “Sea of Stars.” (Some even call this tune Phish’s Dark Star… Not that I would ever say that) The lights go down, and Phish continues elusive jamming in the dark, holding a mirror up to the crowd to allow us to tune into our internal compasses. I notice a connecting thread here: the spinners, the guys in cargo shorts, the retired old heads who were here in 1969 like me, we all get off the same way. We’re all here together, and we’re free of time when we let ourselves be.

A swift exit into “Backwards Down the Numberline” completely changes the vibe from a searchlight passing over dark rolling Catskill hills into a celebration of life. I notice hugging, high fives, and extra freeform raging. “Numberline” transforms into a “Ghost” and finishes the second set with an unexpected riff ringing out with all the hell fire & fury that Phish has built up over the course of the night. Now is the now-or-never moment I was looking for. I rejoin the lawn boys & girls for a finale.

I begin the wander off the lawn and head back to the festival grounds–er, I mean the parking lot. I hear an echo of an encore reverberating of the massive waterlogged hydrangeas decorating the entrance to the venue. Or maybe I was still just tripping. I wade in the sentimental “Velvet Sea” at the top of the hill at Bethel Woods, and the band finishes strong with a “Runaway Jim.”

I notice another band setting up on the “Horizon Stage” a smaller stage for emerging artists located by the entry to the venue. Someone informed me that a “hyper-punk-noise-dance band” (yes, really) called Guerilla Toss was about to take the stage. Look them up. They are the real stuff.

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